Palestinian leader shatters a taboo

JERUSALEM The Palestinian president has set off a strident debate by publicly suggesting his people would have to relinquish claims to ancestral homes in Israel.

Mahmoud Abbas' comments on the refugee issue, made in an interview on Israeli TV over the weekend, triggered hot responses from Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Palestinians have maintained for six decades that Arabs who either fled or were expelled from their homes during the fighting that followed Israel's 1948 creation, as well as all their descendants, have the right to reclaim former properties in what is now Israel.

Israel says a mass return of these people, believed to number some 5 million, would spell the end of Israel as the Jewish state. Also, Israel rejects the concept of a legal “right of return.”

In the interview, Abbas was asked about his birthplace of Safed – now a town in northern Israel. He said that while he would like to visit, he doesn't claim the right to live there.

“I am a refugee, but I am living in Ramallah (in the West Bank). I believe that the West Bank and Gaza is Palestine. And the other parts is Israel,” Abbas said.

“I want to see Safed. It is my right to see it, but not to live there,” he said.

The comments were widely seen as an acknowledgment that return of all the refugees would be impossible.

Palestinian officials have been reluctant to say that in public.

His adviser, Nimr Hammad, said Abbas was being “realistic.”

“He knows he can't bring back 5.5 million Palestinian refugees to Israel,” he said.

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